Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology Lab
School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences,
Stony Brook University
Santa Barbara Basin (previous research):
The Santa Barbara Basin is a small pull-apart basin (like many in the California
Borderlands) located off the coast of southern California. The combination of restricted
water exchange with the open Pacific and strong seasonal productivity causes the
deep waters of the basin to be anoxic. Similar to the Cariaco Basin, bottom water
anoxia and high-deposition rate varved sediments make the Santa Barbara Basin an
ideal location for high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions.
My research program in the Santa Barbrar Basin is currently less active than
it has been
in the past. The research my lab performed at this location was largely based on
a sediment trap project (the location is marked by the yellow triangle above) run
by Dr. Bob Thunell at the University of South Carolina. The trapping program at
this location has been running for more than 20 years, making it one of the longest
oceanographic time-series experiment in the world. We looked at the foraminifera
population under normal and El Niño conditions to see if there were changes that
might be used to reconstruct El Niño events through time. In particular, we focused
on the foraminifera assemblage before and during the 1997-1998 El Niño event, one
of the strongest El Niños on record. There were distinct changes in the population,
notably the presence of two tropical foraminifera species that are normally almost
completely absent from the basin under normal conditions. We also found a large
increase in foraminiferal flux - this was surprising as chlorophyll concentrations
were greatly reduced at this time.
(left) Recovery of a gravity core. (right) Deploying a sediment trap.
